Launching a couple of years ago, CollectiveX was among the first of the major services to offer free group collaboration products. With a distinct focus on professionals, CollectiveX’s feature set revolved heavily around action-oriented capabilities, and less on socialization. That being said, CollectiveX hasn’t seen the same success as some of its peripheral competitors such as Ning. While CollectiveX has been careful to distinguish itself from other self-sustained network creation sites, it’s clear that a new direction is necessary for the company’s long-term success.
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When asked this question by Robert Scoble a couple weeks ago, Clarence said that the primary difference is that “Ning lets you create a mini-MySpace. If you want to create a 50 Cent fan club then Ning is a great solution. We are more focused on groups that want to get things done.” In other words CollectiveX is targeting professional groups. While I’m not sure that this will be a big enough differentiator, CollectiveX has a great interface beyond what Ning currently provides.

Many of the companies that use CollectiveX use the system as a private intranet rather than making it public. While CollectiveX appears to be growing quickly, they definitely face substantial competition from what Clarence considers a different group called “white label social networks”. I’m definitely interested to see if the redesign and new features can help the company start growing quicker.

Given their proximity to the District of Columbia, it would seem like taking the customizable “white label” route would make sense for reselling to government organizations. For now CollectiveX is sticking to the freemium model but we’ll see if this changes as all in the coming months.

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